The body of the soldier is made from two large Baroque pearls, and the legs, arms, head and armour from silver, partly gilded. The use of pearls to create the body of the figure is notably successful in this brilliant and fluid figure in the full Mannerist style. Although it has sometimes been suggested that it might be later in date, it appears to be a work of the sixteenth century and, as such, one of the earliest Baroque pearl figures, the fashion for such small sculptures reaching its height in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.